Blame it on the weather, participation in bake sales, or the need to satisfy my inner cookie monster (who’s usually whining and ignored), but I’ve baked a lot of cookies in recent months.

I’ve never been big on baking cookies unless it was for a bake sale where I could package them up and remove them from our home, or to send to school with my daughter back in the olden days when you could send cookies for the class.

The reason I’ve not been big on baking cookies? We eat them. Pull them from the oven, let them cool enough to touch, and they’re gone in no time. That can’t be good, can it? Tasty good, yes… good for you, maybe not so much.

My mom always had cookies in her big, glass cookie jar. Homemade chocolate chip with and without pecans, chewy oatmeal, chocolately chocolate chip. All baked from scratch. There’s something so welcoming about fresh-baked cookies waiting for you to enjoy them.

Last Christmas, I discovered a new favorite-cookie-ever that I made so often that I ended up not even wanting to bake it again. Until now.

Some of you might recall when I first shared this recipe exactly one year ago, but for those of you that didn’t clip it then, this is your opportunity to add your newest favorite cookie to your cookie baking repertoire.

Flourless chocolate cookies. Flourless? How can a cookie be flourless? I was skeptical at first, considering that there was no flour, no added butter, no baking powder, and I had everything for them on-hand. Gluten-free and no trip to the store? One bowl to clean up? It sounded too good to be true.

I went to the pantry and gathered up a box of powdered sugar, cacao powder, semi-sweet chocolate chips, salt, vanilla and a couple eggs from the fridge. I chose to use cacao because while it’s pretty much interchangeable with cocoa powder in baking, it’s a super food. I’m always trying to put a healthy spin on food, and this was my chance to brag about my “healthy” cookies, right?

Here’s the short story on why the cookies, made with eggs and powdered sugar, actually form cookies. Eggs are a binding agent, holding ingredients together. Egg yolks add richness but allow a crisp texture after baking, but egg whites tend to make cookies dry and cakey. To make up for the drying effect of the egg whites, extra sugar is often added. The egg whites act as strengtheners. When whipped, egg whites (also known as “albumen”) can swell up to eight times their initial volume.

I trusted that the online reviewers that oohed and ahhed about these cookies couldn’t all be wrong, could they? I decided to go for it. The brownie-like batter spread out on the cookie sheet and poofed up kinda strange, but one bite of a transformed and cooled flourless cookie, and I was in total cookie bliss.

Crisp, chewy, chocolatey, perfectly decadent. I made them three days in a row. I ate most of them myself. Cacao’s healthy, dangit!

If you’re worried about being on someone’s “naughty” list rather than their “nice” list this Christmas (or any time for that matter), make these cookies and share them. Merry Christmas, y’all!

Printed with permission of the Alpine Avalanche